Document generated on 09/27/2021 6:55 a.m.

Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875–1914 Steven High

Volume 26, Number 1, October 1997 Article abstract The municipal ownership idea found fertile soil on the rocky north shore of URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1016661ar Lake Superior. The predominance of local land ownership, the absence of large DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1016661ar industrial employers and a small population where religion and ethnicity eased potential class differences created a climate conducive to collective See table of contents action in Port Arthur. The degree of conflict or cooperation that characterized local social relations inevitably extended to the operation of the municipal government and shaped the ways in which citizens perceived their Publisher(s) municipality and its role within the community. This was of paramount importance as Ontario municipal law bound the municipal administration to Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine the will of the majority of the taxpayers by requiring that all money by-laws and franchise agreements be voted upon. The accountability feature of the ISSN Municipal Act, coupled with a convergence of local interests under the rubric of boosterism, convinced Port Arthur residents to pioneer municipal enterprise 0703-0428 (print) in the early 1890s. The creation of one of the first municipally owned and 1918-5138 (digital) operated electric street railways in the world was the innovation of small-scale land owners disillusioned with the boodling habit of the town's elite. The Explore this journal emerging consensus in favour of municipal enterprise was such that by 1901, not even the formidable Bell Telephone Company could dissuade Port Arthur inhabitants. In the process we see that frontier communities like Port Arthur Cite this article did not always accommodate the interests of local elites. Instead of a local populace manipulated by the booster rhetoric of businesspeople and land High, S. (1997). Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, developers, this study reveals a remarkable degree of political accommodation, 1875–1914. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 26(1), 3–17. and even the active cooperation of local ratepayers. https://doi.org/10.7202/1016661ar

All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 1998 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/

This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Steven High

Abstract: The municipal ownership idea found fertile soil on the oeuvre de pionniers et à créer des entreprises munici• rocky north shore of Lake Superior. The predominance pales dès le début des années 1890. De petits proprié• of local land ownership, the absence of large industrial taires terriens, déçus par une élite municipale portée sur employers and a small population where religion and eth• les pots-de-vin, innovèrent en créant l'une des premières nicity eased potential class differences created a climate sociétés de tramways électriques au monde à être déte• conducive to collective action in Port Arthur. The degree nue et exploitée par une municipalité. Le consensus nais• of conflict or cooperation that characterized local social sant en faveur de Ventrepreneurial municipal prit une relations inevitably extended to the operation of the ampleur telle qu'en 1901, même la puissante société Bell municipal government and shaped the ways in which Canada n'arrivait plus à attirer les résidents de Port Ar• citizens perceived their municipality and its role within thur. L'étude permet également de constater que les villes the community. This was of paramount importance as On• frontalières comme Port Arthur ne souscrivaient pas sys• tario municipal law bound the municipal administration tématiquement aux intérêts des élites locales. Loin d'être to the will of the majority of the taxpayers by requiring manipulée par la rhétorique du développement des gens that all money by-laws and franchise agreements be d'affaires et des promoteurs fonciers, la population lo• voted upon. The accountability feature of the Municipal cale se montrait remarquablement encline aux compro• Act, coupled with a convergence of local interests under mis politiques et prête à collaborer activement. the rubric of boosterism, convinced Port Arthur resi• dents to pioneer municipal enterprise in the early 1890s. The creation of one of the first municipally owned and The extent of municipal ownership of urban services in Port Ar• operated electric street railways in the world was the in• thur was unequalled anywhere in North America prior to World novation of small-scale land owners disillusioned with War 1. The municipality operated its own street railway, electric the boodling habit of the town's elite. The emerging con• lights, hydroelectric power station, water and sewerage works sensus in favour of municipal enterprise was such that and a telephone exchange. Two of these municipal franchises by 1901, not even the formidable Bell Telephone Company were important innovations at the time: the construction in 1892 could dissuade Port Arthur inhabitants. In the process of an electric street railway and, together with Fort William and we see that frontier communities like Port Arthur did not Kenora, the foundation of a telephone exchange in 1902. Ac• always accommodate the interests of local elites. Instead cording to the statistics compiled by the Ontario Bureau of of a local populace manipulated by the booster rhetoric Labour in 1911 » no other town or city in the province matched of businesspeople and land developers, this study reveals Port Arthur's capital expenditure on its municipal enterprises a remarkable degree of political accommodation, and when waterworks were excluded from the calculation (Table 1 even the active cooperation of local ratepayers. 1). These statistics also indicate that, up to 1911, small and medium sized municipalities invested more capital in real and Résumé : per capita terms than their big city counterparts. To demonstrate this fact, one only has to note that Ontario's two Vidée d'entrepreneuriat municipal trouva un sol fertile major urban centres of the day, Toronto and Hamilton, were not dans lequel s'implanter sur la rive nord du lac Supérieur. among the top twelve municipal ownership towns. In contrast, À Port Arthur, la prédominance de propriétaires terriens J.O. Curwood wrote in Chicago's The Reader in 1907 that: locaux, l'absence d'importants employeurs industriels et une population restreinte, au sein de laquelle religion et etbnisme atténuaient les conflits sociaux potentiels, ont The municipal ownership idea was planted when the cities [of créé un climat favorable aux initiatives collectives. Le de• Port Arthur and Fort William] were mere villages: it has gré d'antagonisme ou de coopération qui caractérisait à developed with the rising generation of children; it has become l'époque les relations sociales au sein des communautés almost hereditary. The new citizen is practically compelled to 2 s'étendait au fonctionnement de l'administration munici• champion municipal ownership because of popular opinion. .. . pale et façonnait l'idée que se faisaient les citoyens de leur municipalité et de son rôle au sein de la collectivité. This paper will therefore explore three questions. Why did Port Ceci est d'une importance capitale car en vertu de la loi Arthur residents turn decisively to the municipal ownership of ont arienne sur les municipalités, les conseils municipaux urban services in the 1890s? How did the legal environment influ• étaient liés à la volonté de la majorité des contribuables. ence their decision? Did it really matter whether urban ser• La Municipal Act exigeait en effet que tous les contrats de vices were municipally or privately owned? franchise et règlements administratifs relatifs à des cré• dits fassent l'objet d'un vote. L'aspect « responsabilité fi• Municipal governments in the late Victorian era earned an unen• nancière » de cette loi, associé à la convergence d'intérêts viable reputation for corruption and ethnic and class conflict in locaux regroupés sous la bannière du « développement North American urban historiography. Boosterism, boss politics, économique », incita les résidents de Port Arthur à faire ward healers, ambitious land promoters and elitist municipal

3 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Table 1 Antonio Gramsci's conception of hegemony to explain the local Total Investment in Municipal Enterprise convergence of interests that led Port Arthur to become a in Ontario to 1911 pioneer of municipal enterprise in North America.

Municipality Total Value ($) Excluding Waterworks The hegemonic status of boosterism, nonetheless, did not al• ways extend to the techniques utilized by urban boosters. His• Port Arthur 972 700 572 700 torian Thorold J. Tronrud is justified in pointing out that the ' Fort William 1 255 824 553 985 public subsidization of private enterprise met with stiff resis• Guelph 829 560 505 595 tance from organized labour in Port Arthur and Fort William. Yet, this is still not to deny the hegemony of boosterism itself. The Kenora 456 724 633 775 process of negotiation and political accommodation that Berlin 656 548 449 969 typified community relations during these years resulted in the Ottawa 2 580 000 330 000 abandonment of unpopular techniques of subsidization in favour of others that enjoyed more community support. When St. Thomas 600 000 325 000 municipal subsidies to private utility entrepreneurs, for example, Orillia 440 000 325 000 failed to achieve what they were intended to in the 1870s and Kingston 614 437 314 437 1880s, small-scale landowners decisively turned to municipal enterprise despite the opposition of several prominent local Wingham 670 000 300 000 businessmen. A spirit of community, tied firmly to place, thus Owen Sound 430 331 204 431 did not always mean communal solidarity behind the class inter• Brockville 441 000 175 000 ests of local elites. Instead of a local populace manipulated by the booster rhetoric of the elite, this study reveals a remarkable Niagara Falls 325 000 125 000 degree of political accommodation and, even, the active cooperation of ratepayers. In sum, the accountability feature of Statistics compiled from Bureau of Labour, Sessional Papers, 1911 Ontario municipal law, coupled with a convergence of local in• terests under the rubric of boosterism, convinced Port Arthur residents to embrace the municipal ownership idea. reform movements were all part of the turmoil of urban political life. In our rush to examine social conflict, however, historians The Basis for Community Accommodation In Port sometimes overlook the persistence of accommodation and Arthur community. This paper deals with the degree of political accom• The degree of conflict or cooperation that characterized local modation possible in a small frontier town where social relations social relations inevitably extended to the operation of the remained intensely personal prior to World War I. For example, municipal government and shaped the ways in which citizens Carl Betke wrote in his 1984 study of Edmonton, Alberta, that perceived their municipality and its role within the community. "[l]ife in North American cities has clearly been affected by a 3 Hence, it is essential that the character of social relations in Port collective spirit, whatever the internal conflicts." The basis for Arthur be established in order to comprehend why municipal this collective spirit was, in Betke's mind, a culture of accom• ownership took hold to the degree it did prior to World War 1. modation drawn from an emerging "urban community," which This is made more difficult by the fact that Port Arthur's close 4 consolidated groups behind "a massive project." In describing proximity to Fort William has resulted in misleading generaliza• how a local community united in the cause of profit, Betke leads tions by historians such as Jean Morrison regarding the nature me to take a closer look at Alan F.J. Artibise's conception of of social relations at the "Lakehead."5 There were, in fact, sub• boosterism. This paper, in doing so, finds that boosterism, stantial differences between the two towns in terms of property defined as a philosophy of growth, provided the impetus for distribution, the pattern of economic activity, population growth, political accommodation and municipal innovation in Port Arthur ethnicity, religious conviction, the physical environment and prior to World War I. Where I part company with Betke, how• workplace relations. By adopting a comparative framework, this ever, is in his contention that the emergence of an urban com• section will show that even though social relations in Fort Wil• munity necessarily led to a "negative sort of collective interest." liam were characterized by conflict, Port Arthur had a climate of Because Ontario municipal law bound the municipality to the community accommodation that provided the basis for collec• will of the majority of ratepayers, and because property owner tive action. ship was relatively common, political accommodation rather than a so-called "tyranny of community," developed in Port Ar• Property represents the foundation on which social relations are 6 thur. Moreover, the case of Port Arthur shows that boosterism's formed. Canadian philosopher C.B. Macpherson maintained appeal was not limited to the town's elite, and that, in fact, it that property "is both an institution and a concept and that over 7 drew together all property owners, large- and small-scale, in a time the institution and the concept influence each other." life or death struggle against their urban rival. From which, Property is thus embedded in the legal environment as well as came a sense of shared identity. This paper therefore leans on the physical landscape. In Guardians of Progress, Thorold J.

4 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875— 1914

Tronrud suggests that "land [at the Lakehead] was developed in each community in similar but Electricity Consumption 8 not identical fashions." The nature of ownership City of Port Arthur for 1913 over the land bases of Port Arthur and Fort Wil• liam had already been established by 1875 when Other- the federal government decided to locate the ter• Industrial (15. minus of the transcontinental railway along the Kaministiquia River in Fort William. Property rela• tions played a pivotal role in this political decision which shaped social relations for decades to come. Despite a greater population, residents of Prince Arthur's Landing (Port Arthur) did not

enjoy as much influence with Ottawa politicians Municipality (55.48%) as the handful of speculators from outside the Grain Elevators (26.76%) region who controlled the land base of the Fort William area. The decision to locate the terminus in West Fort William, and the subsequent transfer ** other includes an assortment of hotels, churches and newspaper offices of Canadian Pacific Railway operations onto the .: Report on Power Situation Given to Board of Trade, December 16, 1913, land of the Hudson's Bay Company in the East 866 Public Utilities: Thunder Boy Archives. Hydro Box #2, End of Fort William, ensured that the two com• January 1, 1910 - December 30, 1913. munities would develop distinctly different social relations. Even though absentee landowners at• tempted to constrain the scope of municipal ac• Figure 1: Source: Thunder Bay Archives tivity in both towns, they proved more successful in Fort William. Absentee landlords, opposed to increased property taxes, tried unsuccessfully to Because of the slow pace of industrialization, population growth obstruct the incorporation of the Town of Port Arthur and at the Lakehead remained negligible until the turn of the cen• 9 prevent the construction of a municipal street railway. Their tury. As the census figures demonstrate, Port Arthur only sur failure in both cases can be attributed to widespread local passed three thousand inhabitants in 1901.11 In the following ownership of Port Arthur's land base. decade, however, the population expanded to well over eleven thousand. Fort William, on the other hand, had a smaller popula• The economies of Port Arthur and Fort William evolved quite dif• tion than Port Arthur until 1901, when ten years of sustained ferently considering they were situated only five kilometres growth followed, pushing the population of Fort William to six• apart. Fort William acted as a major trans-shipment point for the teen thousand people. The census figures for Port Arthur and North West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and then the Fort William also indicate that the ethnic background of resi• Canadian Pacific Railway, whereas Port Arthur acted as the dents differed substantially prior to 1914. While immigration ex• commercial and administrative centre for the mining and lum• aggerated class conflict in Fort William, it acted to mitigate ber camps north and west of the Lakehead. Fort William was class differences in Port Arthur. As an important trans-shipment hence much more dependent upon large companies based out• point and industrial centre, Fort William attracted a large pool of side the region. In his study of frontier social structure at the unskilled labour from so-called "non-preferred" nationalities Lakehead, as revealed in the census manuscripts of 1871 and (especially Ukrainian and Italian immigrants).12 Their presence 1881, Thorold J. Tronrud makes an important distinction be• exaggerated class conflict by accentuating cultural differences tween the two communities. He describes Fort William's social between the working and middle classes. The relative ethnic structure as composed of an immense lower strata and "an homogeneity in Port Arthur, on the other hand, eased potential upper class of government officials, Hudson's Bay Company class differences. Compared to the 25.9 percent of the in• managers, and Catholic clergy imposed upon it from out• 10 habitants of Fort William who claimed ethnicity of a non- side." Conversely, Port Arthur had a much larger number of in• preferred status, immigrants of non-British or non-Northern digenous professionals and merchants. This description of the European origin comprised only 12.6 percent of Port Arthur's social structure of these two frontier towns implies that Port Ar• population in the 1911 census.13 The absence of large thur was primarily a commercial centre. That industrial activity employers of unskilled workers in Port Arthur, at least until 1910, was insignificant in Port Arthur, compared to the transportation contributed to a situation where ethnicity united the community. and municipal sectors, was demonstrated by the pattern of electric power consumption during 1913 (Figure 1). In• The religious convictions of the inhabitants of Port Arthur also dustrialization in Port Arthur thus lagged far behind its rival. contributed to an atmosphere of social accommodation. In his MA thesis on the Protestant reaction to non-British immigration to the Lakehead, Marvin MacDonald demonstrates that a great

5 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

deal of interdenominational cooperation existed in Port Arthur tion, confined to the "foreign quarter" in Fort William. The excep• during this period. MacDonald cites several examples of how tional case occurred during the Port Arthur Coal Handlers Strike Baptist, Presbyterian and Church of England congregations in of 1912 when a picket line scuffle got out of hand and a worker Port Arthur reached out to the Scandinavian community. 14 of Italian origin was shot. This single incident of violence in Port There likewise does not appear to have been substantial Arthur was in no way comparable to the large-scale riots that evidence of overt anti-Catholicism in Port Arthur. If local broke out in Fort William during the freight handlers strikes of newspapers were any indication, religion only became an issue 1907 and 1909, and the street railway strike in 1913. In the case during the 1885 municipal election when the Daily Sentinel ac of the last mentioned, a mob overturned and smashed a street• cused mayoral candidate James Conmee of exploiting his own car and then stormed a police station in the vain attempt to free Catholicism to defeat his Protestant opponent.15 The victory of an arrested colleague.20 Conmee and his subsequent election as the area's provincial Even though Port Arthur and Fort William were separated by and federal representative suggests very strongly that religious only five kilometres of swamp and two rivers, they developed tensions were muted. into distinct communities. The convergence of various forces in The physical environment also fostered a sense of communal Port Arthur prepared the ground for political accommodation solidarity and identity in Port Arthur (Figure 2). The Finnish and and an intense spirit of community. The genesis of municipal Italian immigrant enclaves were not physically segregated from ownership of urban services in Port Arthur was thus due to a uni• the rest of the town, as were the working-class ghettos of Fort que configuration of social relations, peculiar to the place. In William. In fact, Jean Morrison observes that relatively speak• stead of a community in conflict, the predominance of local ing, working people were dispersed throughout Port Arthur.16 land ownership, the absence of large industrial employers, and This was possible because of the virtual absence of large a small local population where religion and ethnicity further employers that would have obligated working people to live in mitigated social conflict all contributed to a climate conducive close proximity to their places of employment. Furthermore, it to collective action. Because the accountability feature of On• was only after the completion of a street railway that a handful tario municipal law placed social relations at the centre of local of large employers (including the Canadian Northern Railway, governance, a climate of accommodation nurtured the the Pigeon River Lumber Company, and a dry dock) were lo• municipal ownership idea in Port Arthur. As a result, even cated in Port Arthur. The high density of the town also facilitated though social relations made collective action possible, Ontario inter-class contact. As Bryce M. Stewart observed in his social municipal law determined the nature of this response. survey of Port Arthur in 1913, twelve thousand of the sixteen thousand residents of the town still lived in the densely popu• Ontario Municipal Law and the Will of Ratepayers lated area between the hill to the West, Lake Superior to the An exploration into the evolution of statutory law in Ontario is es• East, McVicars Creek to the North and a swamp to the South sential to understand how a climate of community accommoda• (Figure 3).17 Geographers Brian J. Lorch and David A. Jordan tion set the tone for municipal governance in Port Arthur. similarly found that while there were 502 houses in Port Arthur in Statutory law determined the legal basis for municipal 1891, only 54 were added by the 1901 census. The dispersal of enterprise because, unlike in the United States, there was no settlement beyond the confines of the original settlement oc• formal constitutional recognition of private property in Canada. curred after 1909.18 Community relations in Port Arthur thus In Regulatory Failure and Renewal, John Baldwin indicates that reflected the degree of cooperation possible in a small, non-in• Canada turned to public ownership because the "opportunism" dustrial, frontier community. of the state was unconstrained by the court21 The British North America Act did not, according to J.G. Bourinot, recognize The relative absence of conflict in Port Arthur is confirmed by municipal governments as anything more than entirely subor• strike and lockout data compiled by the Department of Labour. dinate to the provinces.22 Their legal status as "corporate Table 2 indicates that strikes and lockouts were much more fre• bodies" was determined by provincial statutes as interpreted by quent in Fort William than in Port Arthur between 1900 and the courts. The province thus determined whether a 1914. The nature of the strikes also differed between the two municipality had the legal right to own and operate urban urban centres as Port Arthur strikers were overwhelmingly services. drawn from non-industrial workplaces.19 In addition, the scale of labour disputes was dramatically different between the two. The early development of local government was of an extremely The average number of strikers involved, for example, in a dis• limited nature. Historian J.H. Aitchison found that local govern• pute was 350.3 in Fort William, 225 in strikes extending to both ment had a long but limited existence from the days of New cities, and only 207.2 in Port Arthur. Hence, the average France. After the American Revolution, British authorities were workplace in Port Arthur was probably smaller than that of Fort loath to recognize local institutions, as New England town hall 23 William. meetings were blamed for fomenting democratic ideas. There was little local autonomy even after the establishment of district The temperament of these labour disputes reveals that violence councils in 1841, as the district officers were all appointed by was essentially the product of social relations in Fort William. All the governor. Modern municipal administration was hence born outbreaks of strike-related violence were, with only one excep•

6 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875—1914

Figure 2: Photograph taken in 1886-87by J.F. Cooke of Port Arthur, Ontario. Source: PA 117633 National Archives of Canada.

in 1849. Commonly referred to as the Baldwin Act, the imum property ownership requirements established for North• Municipal Corporations Act served as the legal basis for ern Ontario. While this Act excluded almost all women and municipal governance in Ontario until the 1960s.24 The Baldwin many unskilled male workers, skilled workers usually owned Act replaced the inadequate district councils with a new enough property to qualify. The town of Port Arthur, also incor• nomenclature of local institutions. Counties, cities, towns, vil• porated in 1883, was eligible to elect a Mayor, and three coun• lages and townships were created with a particular set of cillors from each of the town's three wards. Once elections had responsibilities and taxing powers. Political changes in mid-cen• taken place, the Council was required by the Act to appoint a tury were thus reflected in the extension of the concept of clerk, treasurer, assessors, tax collectors, two auditors and responsible government. This new conception gave ad• such other officials "as are necessary." This gave individual ministrators the freedom to act within their prescribed spheres municipal councils a carte blanche as to the size but not the of interest. Hence, even though the shape of municipal activity shape of their municipal bureaucracy. Perhaps, the single most was mandated, its scope was not. important component of the Act was the legal requirement that all money by-laws and franchise agreements be voted upon by A closer inspection of the consolidated Municipal Act of 1883, the ratepayers.26 The actions of the municipal government were which was essentially an amended version of the Baldwin Act, held accountable to the will of property owners because any ex• is necessary in order to understand the legal standing of Port periment with municipal enterprise needed the approval of a Arthur prior to the First World War.25 This Act set out in detail simple majority of ratepayers. As a result, the importance of so• the various aspects of municipal administration and finance, in• cial relations became paramount within municipal cluding minimum qualification standards for candidates and administration. electors for municipal elections, to be held the first Monday of each January. Permitted to vote were those men and single or The financial provisions in the Municipal Act enabled Ontario widowed women over twenty-one years of age who met the min• municipalities to consider municipal enterprise through the

7 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Figure 3: An 1885 illustrated map of Port Arthur surrounded by 23 photographs of major buildings. Source: NMC 22716 National Arvhives of Canada.

issue of debentures to investors for a period of fifteen or twenty The consolidated Municipal Act of 1883 also prohibited years. However, the Act constrained the municipality, for it set municipal councils from granting an exclusive privilege for any maximum debt loads and tax rates, and required the trade or calling, including urban utilities. While this effectively municipality to meet the annual interest and sinking fund pay• prevented any municipality from enforcing a private monopoly, ments, sufficient to pay off the principle due on the expiry of the utility companies still needed municipal approval to conduct debenture. Moreover, a fair degree of investor confidence in the business within its boundaries. The exception was the Bell municipal government was necessary to raise sufficient finance Telephone Company, which had been granted a special clause capital to meet the expenditures for the proposed activity. The in its Federal charter that stated that its operations were "for the emergence of municipal enterprise in Port Arthur therefore oc• general benefit of Canada," thus permitting the company to es• curred only with the financial assistance of central-Canadian cape municipal regulation.27 The council was empowered, on capitalists who were more willing to invest in the municipality of the other hand, to operate its own waterworks, gasworks and Port Arthur than they were in private enterprise in the region. sewerage facilities.28 There was no explicit indication, in 1883, that an Ontario municipality could legally operate its own street

8 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Table 2 municipalities offer to purchase existing private companies, at a The Nature of Labour Disputes at the Lakehead, price determined through arbitration, before a municipality could take ownership of an urban utility.31 The amendment had 1903-13 a limited impact on utility organization and regulation in Port Ar• Reason for Strike Lakehead Port Arthur Fort William thur because private enterprise had proven unable to raise suffi• Wages 3 2 6 cient finance capital to satisfy public demand. Union Recognition 0 0 1 The year before the adoption of the Conmee amendment, another amendment to the Municipal Act permitted the election Lockout 0 1 1 of councillors at-large.32 The swift adoption of this change by Open Shop 0 0 1 the town of Port Arthur has been used as evidence that the 33 Union Discrimination 1 2 0 town's elite feared the growing power of working-class voters. This argument is misplaced because of the lack of militancy on Working Conditions 0 2 0 the part of the working-class, the limited popular identification Fair Wage Clause 0 0 1 with individual wards and because a growing proportion of 34 Managerial Appointment 0 0 1 council business was city-wide in nature. Strictly localized is• sues such as streets, sidewalks, sewers and water mains were Timekeeping 0 0 1 thus removed from the purview of the municipal council by the Unknown 1 1 7 Ontario Frontage Act. 5 8 19 TOTAL The Frontage Act contributed to the emergence of municipal enterprise by reducing the workload of councillors freeing them Source: Canada, Department of Labour. Strike and Lockout Files. to consider, municipally owned and operated urban services. National Archives of Canada, RG 27, Reel T-2686. Jon Teaford's study of American municipal governance il• lustrates that the most hotly contested and potentially divisive business facing local councillors were "neighbourhood" or railway, electric lights, waterpower or telephone exchange. This 35 "ward" issues. These purely local matters introduced conflict probably reflected the technological infancy of these urban ser• among councillors, who were elected to get as much as pos• vices rather than a conscious effort on the part of provincial sible for their wards. "Ward politics" became synonymous with politicians to limit the scope of municipal enterprise. The con• corruption, contributing to the poor reputation of American solidated Municipal Act therefore facilitated rather than urban governments. Ontario municipalities, in contrast, were obstructed the growth of municipal enterprise by enabling governed by the Frontage Act, which required that those municipalities to issue debentures and through the explicit property owners who directly benefitted from local improve• recognition of the municipal ownership of some urban services. ments pay for the sewer, water main, sidewalk, or other works By requiring that municipal officials secure ratepayer approval 36 themselves through a special assessment on their property. for additional money by-laws, however, Ontario municipal law The municipal government, upon reception of a petition from made social relations central to municipal governance. the abutting property holders in a given block who represented Amendments to the Municipal Act, which occurred on an al• two-thirds of the owners and at least fifty percent of the total as• most annual basis until the outbreak of World War 1, further en• sessed value of the property, was compelled to build the couraged the development of municipal enterprise. An early proposed works. Municipal councillors were therefore by• example of the willingness of legislators to promote municipal passed, freeing the council to consider issues of city-wide im• enterprise occurred in 1890 when the Act was amended to ex• portance. The weakness of the Act was, of course, that local tend the duration of debentures to thirty years for the purposes improvements only occurred in those parts of the municipality of railway, gas, waterworks, parks, sewers and school expendi• able to afford the financial burden of a special assessment.37 tures.29 This reduced the financial barriers to municipal enterprise by spreading out the period in which the ratepayers This brief review of the evolution of statutory law in Ontario as it made payments into a sinking fund. A second amendment ex• relates to municipal enterprise prior to 1914 indicates that the plicitly empowered municipalities to operate street railways in provincial government actively promoted the municipal owner• the absence of an existing privately owned line. The adoption of ship of urban services. Lax enforcement of statutory law by the legislation in 1892 respecting the Town of Port Arthur endorsed province and the courts led historian John Taylor to suggest the municipality's efforts to construct a municipal street rail• that "urban centres were left free in the last part of the 30 nineteenth century to pursue their policies of growth and physi• way. In fact, the only amendment to the Act that potentially 38 constrained municipal enterprise was the so-called "Conmee cal and social amelioration." However, municipal administra• Amendment" adopted in 1899. Named after James Conmee, tions were not free to do everything they desired. Even though the Member of Provincial Parliament for Algoma District (which legislative constraints on the scope of municipal activity were included Port Arthur), the amendment required that loose enough to allow for an expanding range of initiative, municipal politicians were still bound to the will of ratepayers.

9 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

This potential barrier to municipal enterprise was mitigated in tion as clearly as the 1910 vote of nearly two-thirds of Port Ar• Port Arthur by a spirit of accommodation that gave residents thur ratepayers to subsidize the construction of the Finnish confidence in the abilities of their local government. This spirit socialist hall.43 was hence conducive to innovation in municipal governance A high rate of turnover among elected officials in Port Arthur, in and to the provision of urban services. the meantime, contributed to the decline of Council's control 44 Governing the "Municipal Ownership Town" over municipal administration. The average duration of public office for the ninety-five persons who sat on the municipal coun• In the opinion of urban historian John C. Weaver, municipal cil between 1883 and 1914 was extremely short lived, with governments were little more than instruments of the ambition of 43.2% serving only a year and fully 77.9% serving for three local elites prior to the First World War.39 This assumption also years or less. As a consequence, only twenty-one elected offi• applied to the Lakehead. "Government was simple in both struc• cials, representing a modest 22.1% of the total number, were ture and design," Thorold J. Tronrud suggested. "It existed to elected for longer periods of time. This extremely high rate of serve the ends, both personal and collective, of those who con• turnover, somewhat surprising in a community as small as Port trolled it and booster-orientated businessmen readily assumed Arthur, made it even more difficult for the Council to manage that control as a natural right."40 While it was undoubtedly the the expanding scope and complexity of municipal activity.45 ambition of booster politicians to advance their private interests With the exception of a handful of veteran politicians, Port Ar• in public office, to declare that they were successful is mislead• thur had a new batch of councillors every year. By the time that ing. Tronrud's statement, in particular, fails to take into account they had enough experience to allow them to participate fully in the growing scope and complexity of municipal activity by the the business of Council it was election time again, and the turn of the century and, it ignores altogether the rest of the local cycle would repeat itself. The Mayor, naturally, exercised con• community. Were local citizens really that passive? Municipal siderable influence over councillors, as he usually had years of administration comprised not only elected municipal councillors previous experience on the Council. Port Arthur elected thirteen and the mayor, it also included managers and municipal different mayors prior to 1914, with the greatest stability being employees; all of whom were held accountable to ratepayers. the eighteen year period between 1893 and 1910 when three Booster politicians had little alternative but to share power with mayors dominated the council for all but two years.46 It was new groups within and without the municipal administration. therefore inevitable that these one-time councillors depended The political power of the economic elite in Port Arthur, while heavily upon the handful of long-serving councillors, on the substantial, was hence constrained by the growing scope and Mayor, and on the expertise of professional managers for complexity of municipal enterprise. In this context, it made per• guidance. The high turnover of elected officials precluded the fect sense that the decision-making process within the emergence in Port Arthur of the kind of political clique alluded municipal administration was relatively inclusive. to by Weaver and Tronrud. The political culture was, in fact, in• Even so, only a few representatives of the working class were clusive and the municipality was hardly the instrument of the elected to the Port Arthur council during these years. Elected of• ambition of elites ficials in Port Arthur between 1884 and 1914 were almost all of The growing scope and complexity of municipal activity Anglo-Celtic background and almost invariably middle class.41 demanded increasing specialization among the councillors. As The overwhelming defeat of a Finnish socialist municipal slate the council meeting could no longer handle adequately the in 1905, despite their sympathetic reception in the local press, growing volume of business, more and more authority was seems to suggest that most electors were satisfied with their delegated to standing committees and even sub-committees. municipal leadership. Public approval for working-class political While the number of standing committees doubled between involvement, however, was demonstrated by the two Trades 1885 and 1902, the management of Port Arthur's municipal and Labor Council candidates who not only won in 1911, but enterprises became the responsibility of the Electric Railway received an endorsement from the normally conservative Daily 47 and Light Commission. Specialization even occurred among News. "It is quite just and proper," the editor declared, "that the the elected Commissioners, who divided their responsibilities labour organization should take such a step, it may be con• between the street railway, electric light and telephone strued by some as the thin edge of the wedge by which party franchises. Booster politicians therefore had to rely increasingly politics would be introduced into municipal affairs, but there is 42 on professional managers for the day-to-day operation of the more reason to believe otherwise." The election of Frederick municipality. Urry and W.G. Woodside indicates that middle class voters were not ideologically opposed to the representatives of or• The expansion of municipal activity in Port Arthur during the ganized labour. While there does not appear to have been a early 1890s contributed to the emergence of a civic concerted effort on the part of the middle-class to exclude work• bureaucracy informed by the spirit of accommodation in the ing-class representatives from the municipal council, there is community. Unlike towns such as Fort William that experi• likewise little indication of substantial dissatisfaction on the part mented with municipal ownership after 1900, Port Arthur did not of working people and organized labour with the middle-class- import its municipal managers from outside the region. This dominated Council. No single act symbolized this accommoda• enabled municipal employees to rise through the ranks into

10 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

sometimes key managerial positions. One of the outstanding ex• per hour more for labour in March 1911 than did Fort William.56 amples of social mobility was the case of Richard Fox, who This was a significant difference because, at the time, it repre• started out in the early 1890s as a street railway motorman sented twenty-five percent of the hourly wage of the general before being promoted to superintendent of electric lights, and labourer.57 One can also cite the example of Fort William subsequently to assistant and then general superintendent of municipal electrical workers who threatened strike action in the city's electrical department.48 The prospect of career advan• 1911 to achieve parity in wages with Port Arthur. As a result cement, in turn, contributed to longevity within the civic there was an apparent willingness on the part of elected offi• bureaucracy.49 Business historian Alfred Chandler showed how cials to satisfy, at least in part, the wage demands of municipal corporate decision making shifted away from the owners and employees. The boundaries of community accommodation, towards a new group of career managers in The Visible however, had their limits. Hand.50 Just as business managers were found to have been Port Arthur also distinguished itself by its 1909 adoption of a fair more interested in the long-term stability of the firm than the wage schedule in response to an appeal by the local Trades maximization of profits, the new breed of municipal manager and Labour Council (TLC). According to Frederick Urry, the was interested in the long-term viability of the municipality. This schedule established a minimum wage of twenty cents per could be seen in Port Arthur when municipal managers emu• hour, which was substantially higher than the going rate at the lated their counterparts in the private sector through such ad• time for labourers.58 The Council responded well to the presen• ministrative innovations as new organizational structures, tation of the TLC that stressed the need to protect the poorest statistical tracking and uniform accounting practices. As a citizens from exploitation by "unscrupulous" contractors, and pioneer in municipal ownership, Port Arthur actually exported its promised that a fair wage fixed above the going rate would at• managerial talent to other towns and cities when the idea came tract the best workers to the municipality. "What makes efficien• into vogue around 1905.51 Drawn primarily from the local area, cy in workmen, is a good wage to enable them to have proper Port Arthur's municipal managers were thus greatly influenced nourishment, reasonable time for rest and recreation to make by the climate of accommodation in the community. them physically fit, and time for thought to make them mentally A special bond between managers and ordinary municipal fit, and further, good wages and short hours are also conducive employees reflected the remarkable degree of community spirit to increased trade and employment," the TLC argued.59 The na• in Port Arthur. For example, city engineer Joachim Antonisen ture of the TLC's argument suggests that the union leadership wrote to the mayor in December 1909 to "correct the impres• believed, rightly as it turned out, that an appeal for fairness sion wrongly created, that the estimated amount was exceeded would resonate with the Council. This willingness on the part of on account of excessive cost of the day labour [for the Arthur middle-class councillors to respond to the demands of or• Street railway extension]. ... I deem it an injustice to blame the ganized labour collaborates the assertion that accommodation labourers for something which they are not guilty of."52 He continued to characterize social relations in Port Arthur at least risked the wrath of elected officials by casting the blame until the outbreak of World War 1.60 The existence of a spirit of squarely upon the Council, as it had demanded additional chan• community in Port Arthur was further illustrated by the emer• ges to the work while it was in progress. Antonisen's actions ex• gence of municipal enterprise in the town. This is somewhat hibited a level of self-confidence that illustrate the growing ironic, in that, the municipal ownership idea initially pitted Port managerial influence within the municipality. Perhaps the best Arthur's small-scale property owners against prominent mem• evidence that a bond existed between local managers and their bers of the town's elite who had hitherto profited from the public employees was revealed, somewhat ironically, during the 1913 subsidization of private enterprise. Hence, we can see how a street railway strike at the Lakehead. Rather than work with out- philosophy of growth influenced all ratepayers and how a fron• of-town strike breakers, John Hays, the assistant traffic tier community like Port Arthur did not always accommodate to 53 manager, and L. Lindahl, another manager, resigned. As no the interests of the elite. civic employees were unionized prior to the organization of the street railway workers in 1908, wage schedules were drawn up The Emergence of Municipal Enterprise, 1875-1908 54 in a purely ad-hoc manner. The minutes of the Electric Rail• The 1875 decision to locate the terminus of the new transcon• way and Light Commission include repeated references to tinental railway in Fort William inspired risk-taking in Port Arthur groups of employees or individuals petitioning for wage in• and, eventually, led to a general consensus in favour of creases. Petitions usually resulted in the granting of at least a municipal enterprise. As the railway and trans-shipment activity portion of the raise demanded. In fact, the only example of a re• threatened to bypass the village, many people who owned land quest being denied outright by the commissioners concerned a and businesses at the Prince Arthur's Landing (renamed Port 55 petition from female telephone operators. The refusal Arthur in 1883) faced financial ruin. No citizen stood to lose as reflected the expectation that women left employment for mar• much from the decision as Thomas Marks, who had built a riage, making their demands inconsequential. The wages paid dock, warehouse and enlarged his store in anticipation of the to male municipal employees in Port Arthur, nonetheless, boom which would accompany the railway.61 As the dominant revealed a climate of accommodation. Frederick Urry estimated personality in the economic and political life of the Landing, that the City of Port Arthur paid on average five to seven cents Marks prepared to safeguard his investment in the community

11 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

by promoting the construction of a seven-mile-long branch rail tion to the by-law came from absentee landowners wary of way. The municipal Council quickly agreed to provide a thirty- higher property taxes and the promoters of the Ontario and five thousand dollar subsidy to his Prince Arthur's Landing and Rainy River Railway fearful that the by-law would hinder their ef• Kaministiquia Railway Company.62 forts to arrange a municipal subsidy for their own scheme.71 Even though the creation of a municipal street railway seemed Although the branch line succeeded in redirecting, at least tem• assured, a handful of prominent ratepayers attempted to porarily, trans-shipment activity to Port Arthur, local redirect the money into their own pockets upon approval of the shareholders earned a reputation for "boodling" once it was by-law. sold to the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1879. A boodler was a derogatory term used by critics of the day, to describe a person The bombshell came on March 7, 1891 when Thomas Marks who personally profited from public subsidies that had not asked that the street railway be re-routed onto the abandoned benefitted the community as a whole. Rumoured railroad profits right-of-way of the Prince Arthur's Landing and Kaministiquia engendered resentment among the great majority of ratepayers Railway.72 As incentive, Marks offered to lay out the street, who did not share in the wind fall.63 Suspicion of the build the necessary bridges over the Mclntyre and Neebing shareholders was such that the municipality asked to examine Rivers, and give the town free use of the land.73 Although the the correspondence between the local railway company and proposal would have saved the municipality almost ten the government over the controversial transaction.64 Even the thousand dollars, the council defeated Marks' offer because the Daily Sentinel, owned by Thomas Marks, had to admit that there alternate route threatened the viability of the entire enterprise existed considerable public hostility towards Marks within the due to the potential loss of revenue on the unpopulated route. community over the sale.65 The Canadian Pacific Railway's sub• The council's decision turned Marks against the municipal sequent decision to centralize its operations in Fort William, street railway. Five days later, Thomas Marks called on the once again abandoning Port Arthur, tarnished the reputation of municipality to negotiate a street railway franchise agreement the shareholders and further discredited public subsidy arran• with his new company.74 This action temporarily shattered the gements.66 The inability of entrepreneurs, in turn, to construct a local consensus in favour of the municipal street railway, and ig• street railway convinced a growing number of residents to advo• nited a bitter conflict between a handful of prominent cate the municipal ownership of urban services.67 ratepayers and the rest of the community.75 The community's growing resolve to experiment with a Marks used the failure of the street railway by-law to mention municipal street railway was reinforced by the inability of private municipal ownership explicitly to convince the Divisional Court utility entrepreneurs to satisfy public demand for a water works, to halt construction of the street railway on April 30, 1891.76 an electric light system and a hydroelectric development. This injunction was made perpetual on May 26 after the town Numerous franchise agreements with various entrepreneurs, lost its appeal. The situation was such that even the Daily Sen• sometimes at considerable financial expense to ratepayers, tinel had to admit that the injunction was met with "a feeling of ended with almost nothing to show for them.68 In fact, after fif• universal disappointment in the community."77 Unwilling to sub• teen years, private enterprise had only managed to construct a sidize the boodling habit of Port Arthur's economic elite, small tiny forty-lamp electric light system, of inferior quality, and a Bell property owners resolved instead to see the completion of the telephone exchange that charged exorbitant rates. The ground, municipal street railway. The Daily Sentinel observed that: "We indeed, was fertile for municipally sponsored enterprise. In light know that nine-tenths of the business men of the town are op• of the inability of private enterprise to satisfy public demands posed to it, but we also know that the small-property owners ap• 78 for urban services in Port Arthur, the real choice facing the com• pear to be almost solid for it." The fate of the municipal street munity was between the municipal ownership of urban services railway depended on the stance taken by the Ontario govern• or to continue to go without. By 1890, the sense of urgency ment. Sensing the political cost of inaction, the provincial generated by Port Arthur's rivalry with Fort William convinced a government of Oliver Mowat declared the street railway "legal 79 large majority of ratepayers to break with the past and experi• and valid to all intents and purposes." Justice Osier of the On• ment with a municipal street railway. tario Court of Appeal subsequently ruled in favour of the municipality and a second street-railway by-law was confirmed Residents of Port Arthur appreciated that a street railway to Fort 185 to 59.80 On March 8, 1892 the first municipal streetcar William would allow the town to retain its status as the regional rolled down Cumberland Street in Port Arthur to great fanfare administrative and commercial centre for Northwestern Ontario. (Figure 4). That day's entry in the diary of Belle Kittredge, a It was, moreover, generally agreed that, if given a choice, work• young woman who lived with her uncle in Port Arthur from 1890 ing people preferred to live in Port Arthur because of the con• to 1893, observed that the "rides were all free so they had a centration of government offices, banks, large merchants, great crowd. The street was lined with men to watch its 69 schools and churches in the town. An inter-urban street rail movements."81 way, in sum, promised to revitalize the town. Ratepayers responded by voting 237 to 22 on February 2, 1891 to allocate The successful fight for a municipal street railway represented a seventy-five thousand dollars for the purpose of a street railway repudiation of the rapacious economic elite and set off a chain between Port Arthur and Fort William.70 The only initial opposi• of events that drew the municipality first into steam generation

12 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875— 1914

Figure 4: Port Arthur and Fort William (Electric) Raihvay car No. 58. Wood sign along car reads: "Built by the Preston Car & Coach Co. Limited, Canada." Source: PA-152241 National Archives of Canada.

and subsequently into the provision of electric lights. Dissatis• The growing faith of Port Arthur residents in municipal owner• faction with the lighting service provided by the Port Arthur ship culminated in a successful challenge to Bell Telephone's Water, Light and Power Company was such that old boodlers local monopoly after the turn of the century. Ironically, Bell's like George T. Marks, nephew and business partner to Thomas ability to escape municipal regulation through its federal charter Marks, were converted to the municipal ownership idea by the provoked municipal intervention. The ratepayers of Port Arthur, mid 1890s. By century's end, Port Arthur residents' commitment wanting a more affordable and dependable telephone service, to their community came to be symbolized by their enterprising voted overwhelmingly, 173 to 14, in favour of establishing a 83 municipality. The failure of private enterprise to harness the municipal telephone exchange on May 27, 1902. Port Arthur's water power of the region, along with the rising power demands elite, still embittered by Bell Telephone's harsh treatment of a of the municipal street railway and electric light franchises, con• small local telephone company operated by James Conmee in vinced the municipality to proceed with the construction of a the mid 1880s, initiated the first public telephone challenge to municipally owned hydroelectric project. The re-emerging con• Bell's monopoly. The struggle between the municipal telephone sensus in favour of municipal enterprise was demonstrated by franchises and the Bell Telephone Company at the Lakehead quickly became a cause célèbre for the municipal ownership the fact that ratepayers voted, 301 to 27, for the project in 84 February 1901.82 The dispute between large and small property movement across Canada. Of particular importance to owners, so apparent in the early 1890s, clearly did not survive municipalities such as Ottawa, that wanted to follow suit, were to the turn of the century. the efforts of Port Arthur and Fort William to dismantle the ex• clusive agreement between Bell Telephone and the Canadian

13 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Pacific Railway. The towns appealed to the Board of Railway For a small frontier community with no long-distance com• Commissioners to gain access to the premises of the Canadian munication beyond Fort William and the surrounding rural Pacific Railway because Bell Telephone had been given an ex• townships, the rate of telephone diffusion among all social clas• clusive privilege to provide telephone service to the railway.85 ses was remarkable. Although competition accelerated the dif• Represented by municipal reform leader W.D. Lighthall, Port Ar• fusion in Port Arthur, it was the creation of a municipally owned thur and Fort William argued before the Board that this contract and operated exchange that "democratized" the telephone. was illegal and contrary to public policy. After hearing their This finding directly contradicts historian Robert Pike's conten• case, the Board ruled that access to CPR property be allowed tion that "neither public or private ownership of telephones in only after compensating Bell Telephone for the loss of the Canada can be neatly correlated with maximum telephone monopoly. Bell Telephone's lawyer demanded, in turn, that this utilization."91 Unfortunately, he bases this hypothesis on the de• compensation be fixed at one hundred thousand dollars for the gree of "market penetration" by provincially owned telephone loss of the exclusive right nationwide.86 Fortunately for Port Ar• systems in the Prairie Provinces. Despite the fact that the rate of thur and Fort William, the Board fixed compensation at five dol• social diffusion in these provinces was almost identical to that lars per telephone operated by Bell Telephone in each town. of Ontario (where the Bell Telephone Company dominated), Bell Telephone desperately tried to maintain a toe-hold in Port provincial and municipal ownership should not be painted with Arthur, but faced with overwhelming communal opposition, it the same "public ownership" brush. The municipal ownership of was only a matter of time before the Bell Telephone Company telephone service in Port Arthur resulted in a greater social dif• capitulated.87 In the process, the creation of a municipal fusion because ratepayers had a veto over all municipal expen• telephone exchange in Port Arthur transformed the social func• ditures and they had no such power over the provincial tion of the telephone in the community. government. To gain ratepayer approval for ongoing telephone expenditures, the municipal adminstration understood that the The diffusion of telephones was attributable to the political service had to be affordable to most ratepayers. This resulted in power of ratepayers and the existence of a strong sense of com• dramatically reduced charges to municipal subscribers. The munity that bound the residents of Port Arthur together. The Bell Telephone Company charged twenty-four dollars annually municipal administration thus understood that, in order to en• for a residential subscriber and thirty-six dollars for a commer• sure the continued ratification of proposed by-laws, urban ser• cial line in 1902, whereas the municipal rates were only twelve vices had to be affordable to ratepayers, While this did not and twenty-four dollars per year respectively.92 This allowed necessarily enable all local families to enjoy the advantages of municipal leaders to boast that theirs were the lowest telephone these new urban services, the pervasiveness of home owner• rates in the country. "Il ne s'agit plus d'un service réserve aux ship in Port Arthur ensured that most residents were not ex• 88 seules élites économiques," historian Jean-Guy Rens sug• cluded. According to the 1902 Bell Telephone directory for gested in relation to Port Arthur, "désormais, à la faveur de la Port Arthur, over seventy-five percent of the 127 subscribers concurrence et des luttes politiques, le téléphone se répond represented businesses, while the remainder included, almost dans toutes les classes sociales."93 without exception, the residences of these same business owners. Unsatisfied demand for affordable telephone service in• Conclusion spired 67 ratepayers to sign a petition submitted to the Council 89 This paper shows how a spirit of accommodation conducive to on February 1,1902. In contrast to the creation of the collective action led Port Arthur residents to embrace the municipal street railway, the inspiration of small-scale municipal ownership idea. Bound by Ontario municipal law to ratepayers, the prominence of these petitioners indicates that the will of local ratepayers, the municipality of Port Arthur the town's new telephone service was conceived by the depended upon public support to expand its role within the economic elite. Telephones were, nonetheless, rapidly diffused community. Municipal ownership of urban services thus distin• throughout the community. The municipal telephone directory guished itself from private ownership by a greater diffusion of for 1907-1908, for example, listed 923 telephone numbers in these services. Carl Betke's "tyranny of community" had there• Port Arthur. This represented more than a seven-fold increase fore been averted by the accountability feature of Ontario in the number of telephones in just five years. The proportion of municipal law and a strong sense of communal solidarity. Even residential subscribers in relation to commercial use abruptly though the creation of one of the first municipally owned and reversed itself once the municipal system was established. In operated electric street railways in the world was the innovation fact, over seventy-five percent of telephones in Port Arthur were of small landowners disillusioned with the boodling habit of the for residential use. Consequently, there was one telephone for town's economic elite; the emerging consensus within the com• every 13.59 Port Arthur residents, or one for every 19.6 resi• munity in favour of municipal enterprise was such that by 1902, dents when only residential lines are considered. This process not even the formidable Bell Telephone Company could dis• of "democratization" transformed the meaning of telephone suade the inhabitants of Port Arthur. technology and ensured that the service was affordable to many Port Arthur residents.90 The municipal ownership idea was, of course, not confined to Port Arthur. In towns and cities across North America, interest in urban services reached a crescendo not repeated since. Daily

14 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

necessities such as water, sewerage, and electric lights that es• dent could not expect anything more from an advisor. I would also like to acknow• cape our notice today, were frequently the subject of pas• ledge the very constructive suggestions made by the reviewers of this journal and the proofreading of my friends and colleagues, Dave Moorman and Jamie Disbrow. sionate public debate in the first decade of the twentieth century. Amidst this popular fervour, arose a municipal-owner• Notes ship movement that swept aside established private utility com• panies in many large and medium sized cities. It was in this 1. Ontario. Bureau of Labour, Sessional Papers, 191 1.1 have excluded water• context that Port Arthur, already known as a pioneer of works from the equation for two reasons: almost all municipalities owned and municipal enterprise, achieved symbolic importance in the operated their own waterworks by the turn of the century and, more important• ly, the capital investment had more to do with the physical size of the city and wider debate swirling around the role of municipalities in urban the nature of the topography than any kind of commitment to the idea of life. In responding to American critics of municipal corruption, municipal enterprise. And yet, even though Port Arthur and Fort William made J.O. Curwood claimed that Port Arthur and Fort William "have almost the same capital investment in municipal enterprise by 1911, their com• been revealing an heretofore unsuspected virtue of municipal mitment to the idea differed dramatically. In fact, Fort William owed its invest• enterprise — a virtue that means more than anything else the ment to its enterprising neighbour. For example, in 1906 it inherited that portion of the Port Arthur street railway built through Fort William. uplifting of the people of a city or a nation."94 If Port Arthur sym• bolized civic virtue for at least one American advocate of 2. J. 0. Curwood, The Reader (1907), P. 566. municipal enterprise, critics also felt compelled to acknowledge 3. Carl Betke, "The Original City of Edmonton: A Derivative Prairie Urban Com• the town's positive reputation. To counter advocates of a munity," in Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Ariibise, eds. The Canadian City: Es• says in Urban and Social History (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1984), municipal telephone exchange in the nation's capital, the Ot• 393. tawa Journal sent a correspondent to the Lakehead to file a series of highly critical articles. And yet, even though the Finan• 4. Ibid., 392-3. cial Post was also ideologically opposed to municipal 5. Jean Morrison, "Community and Contlict: A Study of the Working Class and its enterprise, it expressed grudging admiration for Port Arthur in Relationship at the Canadian Lakehead, 1903-1913" (M.A. thesis, Lakehead University, 1974), ii. The "community and conflict" thesis advanced by labour an August 1908 editorial. "Public ownership schemes," the Post historian Jean Morrison during the 1970s suggests the relationship between granted, the working and middle classes "changed from one of amity in 1903 to one of hostility in 1913." 6. Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870-19147 Landownershil), Law, Ideology have been generally condemned in the columns of The Post. and Urban Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University The sentiment of investors is rightly opposed to a city or state Press, 1981), 1. undertaking to own and control enterprises which the tradi• 7. C.B. Macpherson, ed. Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions (Toronto: tions of the past have recognized as private corporations. University of Toronto Press, 1978), 1. The Post mentioned Port Arthur as one of the exceptional 8. Thorold J. Tronrud. Guardians of Progress: Boosters and Boosterism in cases where public ownership schemes have been operated Thunder Bay, 1870-1914 (Thunder Bay: Thunder Bay Historical Museum by the city without loss. It seems, however, that even though Society, 1993), 16. intrinsically their schemes may be sound and able to earn a 9. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, March 10, 1884. profit, yet the credit of the city has suffered on account of the 10. Thorold J. Tronrud, "Frontier Social Structure: The Canadian Lakehead, 1871 mere fact that it is a public ownership city. Where one city like and 1881," Ontario History 79 (June 1987), 153. Port Arthur might successfully manage its electric light, telephone and street railway systems, there are a dozen 11. Population Growth at the Lakehead 95 Date Fort William Port Arthur others who would fail in the attempt. 1881 690 1275 1891 + 2176 2698 The Financial Post, of course, tried to use the supposed excep- 1901 3997 +3214 1911 16499 11225 tionalism of Port Arthur's case against the municipal ownership (Source: Canada. Census. 1881-1911) idea itself. Port Arthur hence became an important symbol in the debate between supporters and critics of public enterprise. 12. Donald Avery, Dangerous Foreigners: European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896-1932 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, This paper has shown that, despite far-reaching consequen• 1979), 2. Avery describes the racial hierarchy explicit in Canada's immigration ces, the genesis of municipal ownership in Port Arthur was, in policy where British and North Europeans enjoyed "preferred" status. fact, far removed from the ideologically polarized debate that 13. Canada Census, 1861-1911. Until the turn of the century, nearly three of every emerged after the turn of the century. Born of necessity in 1892, four residents of Port Arthur were of British origin. The non-British population the municipal ownership idea in Port Arthur had, by the turn of in 1901 consisted almost entirely of residents of French, Finnish, German, and the century, become a matter of faith in the local community. Italian ancestry. Over the course of the next ten years, however, an influx of new immigrants resulted in the rapid growth of the non-British population. Ac• cording to the 1911 census, 62.4 percent of the residents of Port Arthur were Acknowledgements of British origin, 12.7 percent were Finns, and the remainder included people of French, Polish, Italian, Scandinavian and German origin. As this article is a much-revised version of my MA thesis, I want to take this oppor• tunity to thank once again my advisor, Dr. Patricia Jasen, for her constant support 14. Marvin MacDonald, "An Examination of Protestant Reaction Toward the Non- and enthusiasm during my studies at Lakehead University. Indeed, a graduate stu• English-Speaking Immigrants in Port Arthur and Fort William, 1904-1914" (M.A. thesis, Lakehead University, 1976), 74. While the Baptists sent the

15 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875-1914

Reverend Fred Palmberg among the large number of Finns and Swedes who text (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1986), 272,; Ontario, Court of settled in the town, the Church of England went so far as to sponsor the con• Appeals (1892), 555. Provincial supervision of municipal activity prior to 1906 struction of St. Ansgarius Church in April 1910. The Presbyterian congregation consisted of the requirement that money by-laws be ratified by the legislature at St Paul's, in an expression of interdenominational cooperation, subsidized before coming into effect. While this veto theoretically kept municipalities in the activity of the Lutherans by donating four dollars per week. check, the burgeoning workload of the legislature and its committees ensured that, in practice, the province bowed to the will of the municipality. After 1906, 15. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, December 10,1884. however, the formation of the Ontario Railway and Municipal Board substantial• 16. Morrison, "Community and Conflict," 147. ly increased the Province's ability to supervise the actions of municipalities. The Board served a semi-judicial function through the arbitration of disputes 17. Bryce M. Stewart, Report of a Preliminary and General Social Survey of Port Ar• between municipalities and ensured municipal by-laws were not ultra vires. thur (Department of Temperance and Moral Reform of the Methodist Church The courts similarly proved unable to constrain the actions of the municipality and the Board of Social Service and Evangelism of the Presbyterian Church, of Port Arthur. 1913), 4. 39. John C. Weaver, Shaping the Canadian City (Kingston: Institute of Local 18. Brian J. Lorch and David A. Jordan. "The Geography of a Century of Residen• Government, 1977), 75. tial Development," in Thorold J. Tronrud and A. Ernest Epp. Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity. (Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 1995), 57. The 40. Tronrud, Guardians of Progress, 52. physical growth of the city promoted by these extensions inextricably altered 41. Tronrud, Guardians of Progress, 23. social relations, as the middle class gradually migrated out of the downtown core. 42. Daily News(DN), January 4, 1909, p. 1. 19. Strikes exclusive to Port Arthur involved the building trades, railroad workers 43. TBA. Bylaw Book, 1910. and street railway employees. Industrial conflict in Fort William, on the other 44. TBA. Government "M" Mayors, Aldermen, Official Record of Service, 1884- hand, involved the building trades, railway workers, moulders, iron workers, 1967, TBA Series 29, Box 15. machinists, dock labourers, boilermakers, longshoremen, factory workers and municipal employees. 45. The high rate of turnover did not reflect an anti-incumbency attitude among the electorate, but rather, a widespread desire to serve only for a short time. 20. Port Arthur Daily News, May 12, 1913. 46. TBA. Government "M", Series 29, Box 15. 21. John Baldwin, Regulatory Failure and Renewal: The Evolution of the Natural Monopoly Contract (Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada, 1989), 1. 47. Henderson's Directories, 1885 and 1902, Thunder Bay Public Library. 22. J.G. Bourinot, How Canada is Governed (Ottawa, 1897), 220-222. 48. Case's Directory of Fort William, Port Arthur and District of Thunder Bay (Fort William: Case and Perry, 1894), 102. 23. Ibid., 118. 49. TBA. "Employees of City - January 1, 1914," Series 88, TBA 4163. Port 24. J.H. Aitchison, "The Municipal Corporations Act of 1849," Canadian Historical Arthur's committment to municipal enterprise led to the formation of a Review 30, No. 2(June 1949), 107. municipal bureaucracy, that consisted of 175 permanent employees in 25. Ontario. Statutes(1883), "The Consolidated Municipal Act" (46 Vic, Chl8), 134- January 1914, not including street railway workers and the City Clerk's office; 252. 127 of these worked in departments responsible for the operation of the dif• ferent franchises, or 72.6 per cent of the total municipal workforce, When the 26. Ibid.^-iS. street railway is factored into this percentage the proportion of the municipal 27. Graham D. Taylor, "Charles F. Sise, Bell Canada, and the American: A Study bureaucracy directly employed in the management of the various urban ser• of Managerial Autonomy, 1880-1905," The Development of Canadian vices increases to well over eighty percent. Capitalism, éd., Douglas McCalla (Toronto, 1990), 155. 50. Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Manaaerial Revolution in American 28. Ontario. Statutes (1883) "Consolidated Municipal Act," 271, 284. Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 10. 29. Ontario. Statutes (1890) "Amendment to the Municipal Act," (53 Vic, Ch 50), 51. Fort William Times-Journal, June 26,1951. Thomas McCauley who had acted 107 and 111. as the principal manager for the Port Arthur street railway was lured to Calgary in 1908 to oversee the establishment of a municipal street railway. McCauley's 30. Ontario. Statutes (1892) "An Act Respecting Port Arthur," (55 Vic, Ch 82). reputation was such that he later became the President of the New Brunswick 31. Ontario. Statutes (1899), "Amendment to the Municipal Act,"(62 Vic, Ch 26), Power Company. Another export was city engineer Joachim Antonisen who 35. left in 1911 for a similar position in Brandon, Manitoba. 32. Ontario. Statutes (1898), "Amendment to the Municipal Act," (61 Vic, Ch 23), 52. TBA. Joachim Antonisen to Mayor, December 6, 1909, File "Arthur St. Rail• 55. way," Series 102, TBA 4477. 33. Thorold J. Tronrud. Guardians of Progress (Thunder Bay: Thunder Bay Histori• 53. Wage Earner, May 16, 1913. cal Museum Society). 54. Labour Gazette, Vol. 2, 488-89. 34. In Fort William, on the other hand, the ward system reflected genuine 55. TBA. Electric Railway, Light and Telephone Commission, Minutes, August 22, socioeconomic divisions within the local populace, thereby making the elimi• 1908, Series 62, TBA 3980. nation of the ward system extremely difficult. 56. Labour Gazette, Vol 11, March 1911, 944. 35. Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870- 19D (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 15. 57. Ibid., Vol. 12, July 1911, 36. 36. Ontario. Statutes, Frontage Act. 58. Ibid., Vol. 11, June 1911, 1396-1405. 37. Ontario. Statutes (1890), "Amendment to the Frontage Act," 118. The Frontage 59. TBA. Port Arthur Council, Minutes, February 22, 1909, TBA, 68. Act was amended in April 1890 to allow a two-thirds majority of a municipal 60. TBA. "Investigation by the Mayor and Council as to the Cause of the Friction in council to construct sewers paid for by general revenue. the Waterwork Department," December 2,1905, File "Claims-Property," Series 38. John H. Taylor, "Urban Autonomy in Canada: Its Evolution and Decline," 102, TBA 4476. The transcripts of the testimony of an investigation held by the Power and Place: Canadian Urban Development in the North American Con• Mayor and Council into the cause of the "friction" within the department in

16 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997) Planting the Municipal Ownership Idea in Port Arthur, 1875—1914

1905 reveal the strength of community feeling over the intrusion of outsiders. 79. "Dwyer et al v. The Town of Port Arthur," Ontario Appeal Records 19, 1891— At the centre of the conflict was the new City Engineer from Toronto who tried 92, 555. to impose managerial control over the operations of his department. Faced 80. Ontario Archives, George Lumsden to Delamera, May 22, 1891, Port Arthur with a choice between endorsing the City Engineer or local workers, the Coun• Electric Street Railway, Corporate Records, Provincial Secretary, RG 8-1-1, cil backed the protesting workers, summarily firing the engineer in the process. 558. 61. Elinor Barr, "Thomas Marks, Merchant Prince of Thunder Bay," Thunder Bay 81. TBHMS, Diary of Belle Kittredge, March 8, 1892, A31/I/I, 116. After overcom• Historical Museum Society Papers and Records 16 (1988), 22. ing local opposition, the municipal street railway faced an uncertain future due 62. Municipality of Shuniah Office (MSO), Shuniah By-law #35, 198. This motion to the refusal of Fort William to permit the street railway extension. In another imposed seven percent interest payments on the ratepayers for the municipal dairy entry Belle Kittredge captured the shortcomings of an inter-urban street debentures until 1891, and the burden was such that the municipality eventual• railway that abruptly stopped a kilometre away from its destination in Fort Wil• ly appealed to the Ontario government for relief from its obligations. Arrange• liam. Kittredge so disliked the stench of dry whiskey on the overcrowded bug• ments for a municipal subsidy to the company (with no strings attached) were gies which transported people between the street railway terminus and Fort greatly assisted by the fact that the Reeve was none other than Thomas Marks William that she preferred to walk. On a particularly muddy day, slowed by the himself, and that two other councillors also held stock in the newly-formed rail• layers of mud that caked her shoes, and in danger of missing the streetcar, Kit• way company. tredge was forced to take off her shoes and run barefoot through the mud just to make the connection. This colourful incident illustrates the inconvenience to 63. Fort William Journal, June 8, 1892. street railway passengers in 1892, and the importance of extending the line all 64. MSO. Shuniah Council, Minutes, August 5, 1880, 372. the way to Fort William. Without gaining entry into that municipality, the street railway risked failing in its primary objective of convincing people, such as 65. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, December 24, 1884. Belle Kittredge, to commute to their Fort William workplaces. The Ontario 66. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, May 15, 1889. The appearance of municipal government's intervention on behalf of Port Arthur once again proved crucial. politicians such as James Farrand Ruttan and W.P. Cooke, who vehemently 82. Ontario. Statutes, "Act Respecting Port Arthur," April 15, 1901 (1 Edw. Ch 65), opposed the long standing practice of subsidizing private enterprise, 317. demonstrates that the boodlers no longer monopolized municipal politics. 83. "Fight is Over, the People Won," Fort William Daily Times Journal (May 15, 67. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, May 23, 1885. 1902), 1. 68. For more information regarding the failure of private enterprise to satisfy public 84. Robert Collins, A Voice from Afar: The History of Telecommunications in demand for urban services in Port Arthur see Steven High, " SA Municipal Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977), 181. Ownership Town': The Organization and Regulation of Urban Services in Port Arthur, 1875-1914," Lakehead University: MA thesis, 1994. 85. NAC, Fort William and Port Arthur to Chief Commissioner, Board of Railway Commissioners for Canada, RG 46, Vol 1412, File 437. The agreement was 69. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, January 3, 1891. signed on May 1, 1902. 70. Port Arthur By-law Book T-281, Series 21, TBA 144. 86. Ibid., Reporters Notes - Hearing, February 29, 1904, 374. 71. TBHMS, Port Arthur Board of Trade, Minutes, Vol. 1, December 23, 1890, 99. 87. The assets of Bell Telephone were sold to the municipality in 1909 on the con• 72. It was openly admitted in the local press that the abutting property owned by dition that Bell never return. Marks and his associates would immediately jump in value. 88. George Bernard Shaw, The Commonsense of Municipal Trading, Fabian 73. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, March 7, 1891 (additional newspaper coverage ap• Socialist Series No. 5, 2nd Edition (London: A.C. Fifield, 1912), 52. Shaw wrote peared on March 9, 14 and 18). that while the new technologies were "for a long time the toys of the rich," municipal ownership acted to distribute these urban services more fairly. 74. Ontario, Statutes (1891) 54 Vict. Ch 93, 339; DS., March 18, 1891. The Port Ar• thur and Fort William Railroad Company proposed to construct the street rail• 89. TBA. Petition in favour of a Municipal Telephone Exchange, File "Telephone- way on Marks' route in exchange for a twenty year franchise agreement and a General," Series 102, Thunder Bay Archives (TBA) 4478. bonus of seventy-five thousand dollars. 90. TBA. Port Arthur Council, Minutes, January 26, 1903, Series 13, TBA 67, 148- 75. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, July 5, 1891. Electric traction seized the imagination 49. The generation of cheap power from a municipal hydroelectric develop• of Port Arthur boosters. As a result, considerable public criticism erupted over ment built just after the turn of the century resulted in the social diffusion the suggestion by opponents of the municipal enterprise that horse traction or (distribution beyond the confines of the business elite) of electric lights in Port steam locomotion was "good enough" for a small frontier town. The public fixa• Arthur. The Council consciously encouraged this expansion by keeping the tion on electricity perplexed the editor of the Daily Sentinel: "... we cannot un• rates charged as low as possible. derstand why an electric street railway is absolutely necessary to our welfare. Why will not a horse car road do as well? What valid objections can be urged 91. Pike, 44. against cars actuated by steam? Why is there so much placed on the word 92. TBA. Mayor Oliver to Adam Beck, March 11, 1914, File "Mayor's Inaugural Ad• electric? ... that the elevation of electricity with a god who is to deliver this dress - J.A. Oliver" Series 88, TBA 4163. town from untold evils is a mystery unexplainable to us." By derisively labelling municipal street railway advocates "the electrics," opponents revealed that the 93. Jean-Guy Rens, L'Empire Invisible; Histoire des Telecommunications au technology itself achieved symbolic importance in the local debate. Canada de 1846 à 1956 (Ste Foy, Qc.: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1993), 156. 76. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, March 19, 1891 ; "Dwyer et al v. Town of Port Ar• 94. Curwood, 568. thur," Appeals Reports 19, 1891-92, 555. 77. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, June 9, 1891. 95. The Financial Post, August 8, 1908. 78. Port Arthur Daily Sentinel, August 20, 1891.

17 Urban History Review /Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXVI, No. 1 (October, 1997)